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Barclays supports technology growth through Integration
IP Integration is number 66 on the Southern Tech 100 – an annual listing of the top 100 private, independent technology companies across the south. Ask the company’s communications expert and operations director Chris Wood what changes you might see on walking into an average office five years from now and the answer is short but telling. “Well, for a start you probably wouldn’t be walking into the office as often,“ he replies
The move towards home working, made simple by rapidly-improving and increasingly-sophisticated technology, is one of the main changes that Wood and the team at IP Integration are expecting not just to experience but also to help deliver.
His Reading-based company provides telephony solutions that are all-but invisible to the user, allowing an employee to have just one number but connect to the rest of the world in a variety of different ways – by mobile, fixed line or over the internet.
“The days when a telephone system was a mass of wiring that all traced back to a big metal box in the corner of the office are long gone,“ he explained.
“These days, voice is just another data stream that is delivered to the desktop from a server or, increasingly, from a data centre that is not even in the same building.“
As a telephone systems provider that began trading 12 years ago, when most systems were still connected to that metal box in the corner, it became clear to Wood in recent years that IP Integration needed to expand its in-house skills in order to stay ahead of the rapidly-changing game.
Although respected for the quality of its service, and with numerous clients on the books, the company wanted to bring the right team on board to consolidate its position in the world of IP-based telephony.
“We had been supporting our in-house skills by outsourcing some of the technical IT work around servers and networking but we knew that it would make more sense to add the right experts to our own team,“ said Wood.
The opportunity to do just that came about when another Reading-based company, Micropoint Managed Services, came onto the market.
“We knew Micropoint was a sound company with a skilled workforce, they
www.businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2013
were local to us and they had just the IT networking and security expertise we needed to strengthen our existing telephony offer,“ explained Wood.
“We had just moved into new premises, which meant we had space to bring the Micropoint team on board, reduce their overheads, turn a profitable business into an even more profitable business and increase our own skills set at the same time.“
This all seemed logical, but it also needed financial backing of around half a million pounds, money which financial director Stuart Lawrence first tried to borrow from the company’s existing bank.
“While on the surface I was looking for a loan, I also saw this as an opportunity to revitalise the relationship with our old bank as they didn’t seem to be taking much interest in the company,“ said Lawrence.
He was disappointed. The money was there, but it was considerably more expensive than the offer he received from Barclays’ relationship director Dan Havercroft, who not only came up with
Chris Wood
the deal financially but was far closer to what Lawrence was looking for in terms of relationship banking.
“I told Dan that I wanted to have a quarterly meeting with him and that I was looking for more than a one-off arrangement. I wanted a long-term relationship with someone who was prepared to get to know our business and work alongside us – and that’s what Dan and Barclays have delivered,“ said Lawrence.
Lawrence switched IP Integration’s day- to-day banking to Barclays shortly after securing the loan to buy Micropoint, an acquisition that quickly proved to be a sound business decision.
Integrating the entire Micropoint team has allowed the business to
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